Those who regard themselves as the custodians of Labour’s electability know whom to blame: Jeremy Corbyn. They regard him as Labour’s id, a morass of self-indulgence who has escaped the control of the superego; the pleasure principle of socialist fantasy, revolting against the reality principle of government. Although one can understand why they feel this way, they are guilty of intellectual dishonesty.
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Samizdata quote of the dayAugust 28th, 2015 |
 9 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Jeremy Corbyn is going to win the election on a canter.
Agreed.
Mr Corbyn simply takes the basic beliefs, principles, of the Labour party to their “logical” conclusions.
If Labour party people are horrified by those conclusions – they should ask themselves the following question.
“Am I saying that I really believe the same evil things that Mr Cobyn does – but just wish to conceal from the voters. Or am I really horrified by this evil?”
And if the answer is “I am really horrified by this evil” – it is time to reject the basic beliefs, principles, of socialism itself.
Paul,
Anyone who had the decency to ask themself that question would probably never have joined the Labour Party. This is the party that in the early 1980s was happy to call some defectors to the SDP the ‘Gang of Four‘, a clear reference to Maoist China and indicative of the fellowship of socialists the world over.
The question that they may well ask is “Why is this idiot trying to spoil it for us by being so open?” and then lament the risk of being exiled from power, but not influence, for the rest of their careers.
Corbyn’s election would be an expression of Labour’s intellectual honesty, not dishonesty.
It be an admission that the party is a hobby for lots of middle class, moderately affluent, economically secure, mainly public sector professional types who want to play and politics and want nothing to do with the working class and their problems at all.
That’s a good quote from Bruce Anderson’s article, but not the best one. This would have been my pick:
Paul, when you’re going to commit fraud you don’t go around telling people you’re intentions.
Meh. “Gang of Four” is just an easy phrase to use for any group of four leaders or activists or writers. I’ve seen it used in many situations having nothing to do with socialism or even politics.
For instance, the four co-authors of Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software have been called “the Gang of Four”. Also a 1989 American TV pilot about four high school seniors; a card game; a “post-punk band” from Leeds; Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon as the four huge internet companies entering the banking and payments industry; an Australian microbrewery relying on water, hops, malt, and yeast; four neo-traditionalist Beaujolais vintners; many others.
The phrase has been broadened to “Gang of [N]”, where N can be several different numbers. For instance, “the Gang of Eight” U.S. Senators who co-wrote and co-sponsored an immigration bill. There have also been gangs of three, five, six, seven, nine, and ten.
Tony Blair was clearly not a Socialist, and succeeded in having Clause 4 deleted from the Labour Party constitution. I expect he saw Labour as being some sort of European style Social Democratic party, ruling the British Region of the European Union, whilst he went on to be the Euro President. Something like that anyway. I don’t think he was a big political thinker, though he probably spent more time on it than Call Me Dave.
I think Blair was tolerated rather than loved by Labour Party members because his bland style of Euro Social Democracy won three elections. Now Labour has lost two elections, and it seems that the membership have remembered that despite Blair, they really are Socialists. It’s true, they believe all that shit. So by all means they should vote for Corbyn, who also believes in the same shit, rather than any of the other three bland candidates, who seem to believe, if anything, in a sort of managerial, high public spending, vague Social Democracy, with a bit of class war toff bashing on the side.
With Corbyn what you see is what you get, a genuine Socialist, and it seems that may be what most Labour Party members want. They are welcome to him.
Unfortunately, the Labour Party is the political arm of collectivist unions, it always was and it always should be, and they deserve Corbyn as leader, as pete said, this would be the honest approach, it would be politically prehistoric and unelectable, but there would be less ambiguity.
What the British political system needs is a split on both sides, more parties and more coalitions, a move towards representation by policy not by tribalism.
One side needs to split initially, the Conservative split was saved by the election as everyone voted Anyone But Miliband, but Corbyn may well be the catalyst for the left side to dismember first.